When Satan Came To Melitz

Melitz (or Mielic) was a small shtetl in Poland. The following article is based on authentic Yiddish quotes from the original Melitz archives (courtesy Yad Vashem in Jerusalem). All the names are real.

By the end of 1939, some 250,000 Jews had died in Nazi-occupied Poland through torture, shooting, starvation and disease. Extermination camps were not yet on the Nazi drawing boards.

But it is precisely those first few weeks of the war - so often neglected because they are overshadowed by the extermination machine developed in the years to come - that has a drama all its own. We can capture in it a reflection of the spirit of the shtetl - the last brilliant glow, about to be shattered as Satan began recreating heaven and earth...